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Martin Kern
Martin Kern is the Joanna and Greg ’84 P13 P18 Zeluck Professor in Asian Studies at Princeton University. Professor Kern specializes in the study of Chinese antiquity. The author and editor of numerous books and articles crossing the disciplines of literature, history, religion, and art, he studies the practices of textual composition, transmission, and hermeneutics in the Chinese manuscript culture of the first millennium BCE. He is further interested in the comparative study of antiquity and currently co-edits Philological Practices: A Comparative Historical Lexicon, a project spanning more than twenty premodern philological traditions from around the globe. His current monograph projects include Performance, Memory, and Authorship in Ancient China: The Formation of the Textual Tradition and The Chinese “Classic of Poetry” in Ancient Manuscripts: Studies in Poetry, Poetics, and the Sociology of Text. Kern also serves as President of the American Oriental Society (2023–2024) and directs the “International Center for the Study of Ancient Text Cultures” at Renmin University of China (Beijing).
About Key Conversations 
Key Conversations with Phi Beta Kappa is a podcast featuring in-depth conversations between Fred Lawrence, Secretary/CEO of Phi Beta Kappa, and Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholars. With a new episode released monthly, each podcast invites listeners to take a seat at the table to learn more about the featured Scholar's background, research, and how they have taken their respective paths to where they are now, and where they are headed.
Since 1956, the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program has been offering undergraduates the opportunity to spend time with some of America's most distinguished scholars. The purpose of the program is to contribute to the intellectual life of the campus by making possible an exchange of ideas between the Visiting Scholars and the resident faculty and students.
